Do you think the inventors of the wheeled suitcase imagined the consequences of their creation? The same question arises for those who create – but also buy and deploy – all the digital tools that are transforming our world and our habits…
Wheeled suitcases have spread through the corridors of railway stations and airports, and through the streets of tourist towns, over the past few decades… It is hard to say exactly when this success began, even though the first patents date back to the 1970s for four-wheeled models and to the late 1980s for two wheels and a retractable handle, then to 1993 for a similar device (and these dates are not exhaustive).
Some have claimed that wheeled suitcases could have reached the market earlier, and that this delay was a sign – yet another – of the “dominant patriarchy”, keen to preserve its power as the carrier of suitcases[1].
Being a representative – quite involuntarily, though I live with it very well – of a suspect breed (a man over fifty of European descent; as for my tastes and habits, they are nobody’s business but mine), I cannot assess the relevance or seriousness of this interpretation.
But my taste for technology and my varied reading have also led me to think that certain technical and industrial developments – such as the arrival on the market, at more affordable prices, of lighter and stronger materials, for suitcase shells as well as for the wheels themselves and their swivel mounts, which now come away from the shell less and less often – may also have played a part in the emergence, and then the flood, of these new travel accessories…
It should be noted that this great step forward in the liberation of travellers did not have only supporters… The first movements of “revolt” were observed in 2014 in Berlin, and no doubt in other European cities, because of the racket made by wheeled suitcases on the pavements (as on the cobblestones of Dubrovnik, which “banned” them in summer 2023 – in reality, the town hall published “recommendations”).
Mind your feet!
In 2010, travelling frequently for my consulting work, I had been struck (in every sense of the word) by the increasingly aggressive (or careless?) behaviour of “suitcase draggers”[2], as well as by an article in Les Échos, the French business daily, reporting the renewed economic success of Samsonite, one of the market leaders, thanks to these innovations[3]. A time marker, among others no doubt, of this market’s period of strong growth.
I had indeed noticed that, with these suitcases trailing behind them, many travellers took up more circulation space in stations (not to mention those whose suitcases got stuck in automatic gates programmed to let one person through). This could cause congestion when boarding, in spaces designed for the floor area of one traveller rather than the equivalent of two and a half… This does not apply, of course, to those who, more mindful of their fellow citizens’ feet, enjoyed the benefit of the wheels while moving the suitcase alongside them, like a “classic” suitcase but without the weight.
And since then, probably with the development of new, cheaper materials that have allowed less prestigious – and therefore less expensive – manufacturers to offer products affordable to the greatest number, everyone will have seen travellers loaded with ever more numerous and bulky, but mobile, suitcases (though perhaps this too is a new retreat by the patriarchy, which would also have “given up” on very large suitcases, of which every man, as we know, delighted in being the exclusive carrier…).
Until, this autumn, the new rules introduced by SNCF, the French national railway company, limiting the volume and number of pieces of luggage each passenger may take on board the TGV high-speed trains – provoking, as usual, the ire of social media and journalists, and the more or less contrite justifications of the company’s representatives… While some mentioned the fridges people take with them, I cannot help thinking that the growth in the size of luggage, made possible by these wheels, is not entirely unrelated. But saying so might be a sign of a patriarchy making a comeback, so others more cautious than me have refrained from doing so…
But what, after all, is the link between these suitcases and the “digital social responsibility” mentioned in the title?
Usage, as you have probably guessed…
Usage, always usage
Even more than suitcases, but in far more varied forms, digital products – physical and even more so intangible – are spreading through our lives, our habits, our practices…
And since software now accounts for a dominant share of the growth of these markets, it is worth bearing in mind the particular features of this sector’s business model… It differs from all “physical” products which – without this preventing remarkable industrial successes – must always include in their costs the materials needed to manufacture them, and the associated logistics. With a proportional gain, or even better, but rarely an exponential one – a curve that characterises the success of software products.
Because for software, and all the more so since the emergence of the “cloud”, once the design costs have been met, only maintenance and data storage costs need to be taken into account – costs that are, moreover, passed on to the customer through subscriptions…
We can therefore understand the considerable appeal of this digital world which, for years, has seemed to promise quick fortunes to brilliant programmers – and even more so to even more talented “marketers”. Because once the product has been designed, the profit on sales is net (practically, give or take a few adjustments)…
Of course, this summary is outrageously caricatural.
And this digital production model has had the added advantage of stimulating every sector of industry by offering them “Agile” models (whose manifesto was born in the digital world) to modernise the mechanistic and bureaucratic running of projects. But while it is possible to “pivot” by abandoning a few months of digital development because the expected profit will wipe out this lost investment, it is not always possible to scrap industrial investments once it becomes clear that they will not deliver all the expected benefits…
But by emphasising the lure of profit that these markets arouse, I want to draw attention to the importance of thinking, when designing and/or buying a digital product, about the uses that will be made of it…
What social value for your investments?
Did the designers of suitcases involve transport operators in their work or in their marketing policies? To anticipate uses, or even to accompany their products with recommendations on how to use them, beyond the precautions that guarantee their own legal protection (“caution, the contents of your coffee cup may be hot…”, or “do not put your cat in the microwave to dry it”)? One may doubt it…
So, do software designers draw their customers’ attention to the uses they will make of them – directly or indirectly – and to those the “users” will make of them? Let us give them the benefit of the doubt but, frankly, I sometimes wonder.
A few years ago, there was the great fashion for “enterprise social networks”, whose purpose was to “bring employees closer together”…
With the health crisis came the explosion of vendors of countless videoconferencing solutions and online collaborative working tools… Even if usage has evolved, how many applications have you since removed from your phones, from your servers? Because after “the bubble” there is always the return to earth. But the budgets have been spent. With what social benefit for the company, or for the community around it?
And today, of course, there is AI… With, however, a few ethical warnings, and a few “controversial” practices, exposed or openly acknowledged, such as the “digital Turks” – precarious workers performing ultra-fragmented tasks in a Taylorist model transposed overseas – while vendors’ promises flatter many people’s fantasies.
Fortunately, there are “safeguards”, such as human resources or the legal department, to temper the enthusiasm of executives “carried away” by talented IT salespeople… who promise them greater efficiency and profitability… Provided, perhaps, that they train and retrain (for an additional fee) users who always put nothing but ill will into it…
Even when these “users’” reservations about new tools often touch, in fact, on more fundamental questions. Such as social value, for example.
But while legal arguments carry weight, what about these even more “intangible” dimensions, less tangible, more open to explanation, negotiation and interpretation?
Nobody will blame a talented salesperson who, after all, is doing their job… But nobody is obliged – beyond acknowledging the “artist’s” performance – to accept their proposal without thinking it through.
Co-constructing social and societal value
There is thinking to be done about working conditions – about usage… And here, work that involves users always proves its worth. Of course, vendors of digital services will often involve “test groups”, sometimes to “debug” and often to prepare a larger-scale roll-out. But beyond the technical aspects of getting to grips with the tool, will they pay attention to the social value of a product they have every interest in selling? That is not their role…
And then there is also work to be done on what lies behind “technical” uses.
And this work, upstream of the purchase, can only be done by the customers themselves… (well, if they need help with this collaborative work, I have a few names to suggest!)
It may take a little time, admittedly. But this work of “co-constructing” the social value of a tool guarantees both the quality and the speed of its adoption and use – if it is acquired – because resistance will have been addressed upstream. And above all, it will help the company respect, and even improve on, its social and societal commitments.
Which, it seems, generates an even greater profit than a software product.
[1] Maëlle Le Corre, « Le saviez-vous ? Sans le patriarcat, on aurait eu des valises à roulettes bien plus tôt » (“Did you know? Without the patriarchy, we would have had wheeled suitcases much earlier”), Madmoizelle, 25 August 2023: https://www.madmoizelle.com/le-saviez-vous-sans-le-patriarcat-on-aurait-eu-des-valises-a-roulettes-bien-plus-tot-1229749
[2] « Usages », on the Kaqi blog (in French): https://www.kaqi.fr/usages/
[3] https://www.lesechos.fr/2010/10/samsonite-rebondit-grace-a-linnovation-et-vise-la-bourse-433760 (in French)
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